If Brutti noticed the extra audience, he didn’t react. The only noticeable effect to the sight of the body was an increase in the depth of his breathing. The cop at the window pressed a button on an intercom and said, “OK.” The M.E. reached across the body and pulled the sheet back from the head, draping it modestly well above the woman’s breasts. The dead woman’s skin was very white. Sealth reflected briefly that even for a corpse she looked exceptionally drained of color. Probably the immersion, he thought. His eyes met his partner’s.
“Is that your sister, sir?” the younger cop said.
Brutti said nothing. He stared at the face. Then the tough-guy veneer broke.
“Maria!” he said. “What did they do to you?”
“Is this your sister?”
Brutti got control of himself and nodded. Then, realizing that the officers probably needed a verbal response, he said. “Yes, that is my sister.”
“Sorry for your loss,” Sealth said, as his partner reached for the intercom and the drawstring. “Let’s go outside and see about her personal effects.”
It was an obvious attempt to distract the bereaved man. Again, he was thankful for their consideration. This was not pleasant for them, he realized, no matter what their feelings about him. A young woman was dead and they would do everything they could to find out what had happened. The fact that she was the sister of a notorious local gangster might complicate their investigation but not alter their dedication to find her killer. In that they would make common ground. He knew they wouldn’t even bother telling him to leave it to them. This would not be the first time Carlo Brutti tried to save the state the time and money of a trial.
“Where was she found,” Brutti said.
Shit. Sealth hesitated.
“I will find out anyway, detective, so you might as well tell me now.”
“In a warehouse near the docks.”
“What warehouse?” Brutti’s eyes bore into his. Double shit.
“Seattle Seafood Distributors.”
“Boyko!” Brutti spat the name out.
“Don’t jump to any conclusions, Carlo. We don’t know anything yet.” Sealth decided not to tell Brutti his sister was found under a half-ton of halibut.
The detective who was lowering the blinds heard something clatter on the other side of the window. He looked into the other room. The male student had dropped his clipboard. His mouth was agape. This had barely registered with the cop when he noticed the young A.D.A., who had stopped in her tracks and was now staring at the gurney with one hand at her throat and the other bracing herself against the window, knees buckling. Sealth also saw the prosecutor sagging and took a step toward her. But a shout drew his gaze into the scene on the other side of the window. The medical examiner and his two students now had all their attention focused at a point about two-thirds down the table. The male student had started backing away.
“What the fuck!” the younger cop said. “Noah!”
The A.D.A. screamed. Both cops forgot her and rushed to the window. The draped body was motionless, but the sheet was billowing upward and undulating. The people on both sides of the window were frozen. Only their heads moved as they followed the swaying “bulge.” They looked like spectators at a tennis match. Finally, the medical examiner, forgetting the proprieties and the brother, ripped the sheet completely off the body.
“Mother of God!” Sealth exclaimed, instinctively reaching for his weapon. He stopped in mid draw. A slithering pinkish grey eel-like creature was crawling down the corpse’s right thigh. A bubbling excretion started to spread from the animal. It rolled off the table onto the floor, although the whitish slime made it seem like it was still tethered to the woman. When it hit the tile floor it made a disgusting smacking sound, clearly audible through the glass. It was at least two feet long, thick as a garden hose.
There was a loud crash from inside the viewing room as the A.D.A pitched backward into the folding chairs, almost upending the metal table. None of the men even turned. In the morgue itself, both students had now fled to a far corner. The boy was vomiting. Even the M.E. had retreated a few feet. But once over his initial shock his scientific training took over and he began to advance on the “thing.” Its movements were slowing. It’s horrible mouth, rimmed by serrated teeth and short thick rubbery tentacles, opened and closed spasmodically. Then it was still.
The total silence which accompanied the final moments of the terrible tableau was shattered by the sounds of fists pounding on the window. Only then did the detectives remember Brutti, who seemed to be trying to claw through the partition. The white officer pinned his arms back while Sealth shouted, “Get him out of here!” Then he turned to the A.D.A., who was moaning feebly and bleeding from a nasty gash on the back of her head. He put his handkerchief against the wound. She was coming around. He took off his jacket, rolled it up and made a pillow for her head. Uncharitably, he hoped she wouldn’t bleed through. It was his favorite. Scalp wounds were the worst. He heard his partner and Brutti shouting in the hallway. Other voices, shouts. An alarm began clanging. He looked up and saw the M.E. gingerly prodding the slimy creature with his booted foot. The two assistants were slowly walking towards the table on which a now totally naked woman lay indelicately exposed. For some reason he noticed her bright red toenails, so incongruous against her pale skin and the horror of her condition. It made him think of the ashtray on the table. He’d been off cigarettes almost two years but now he felt like he might kill somebody if he couldn’t get a smoke.
One of the kids, showing amazing spunk under the circumstances, reached for the sheet. Sealth punched the intercom and shouted, “Don’t touch anything. I want a crime scene unit in there!” He reached for his cell phone. Christ! What a colossal fuckup!
CHAPTER 9 – PEST CONTROL
The Gulfstream II leveled off at 42,000 feet just as its sole passenger finished his first glass of wine.
“Would you like more Cabernet?”
“I’d be a fool if I didn’t,” Jesús Garza said, holding out his glass to the smiling Miss Universe lookalike that Victor favored for his fleet of three corporate jets. As usual the wine served aboard the company’s planes was superb. “And what is that scrumptious aroma?”
“Lamb cutlets. They’ll be ready in a minute. Can I get you a salad first?”
Having a “getaway jet” at his disposal certainly made things pleasant, Garza thought, stifling a yawn. What the wine started the food would finish. He’d sleep most of the way to Florida. After a mostly wet week in Seattle, he was looking forward to some time off in Naples, where he and Christian maintained their permanent residence. The Florida Gulf Coast town was 90 minutes by car and a world away from the Miami madhouse. Naples was surprisingly open to other lifestyles and had a small but vibrant gay subculture. Garza and Keitel chalked that up to the basic practicality of Midwesterners, who dominated the town. They had many friends of all persuasions and were fixtures at the town’s annual Wine Festival, which raised millions for local schools and drew the elite of Hollywood and Wall Street. Garza was hoping to surprise Christian with an invitation to one of the private dinners prepared by Emeril or Martha in one of the hedge fund mansions in Port Royal. Yes, Garza thought, Naples was a sweet place to unwind, with its 100 golf courses and world-class restaurants. He hoped Christian had called the cleaning service.
***
In fact, Keitel had just made the call after discovering a Periplaneta americana swimming in one of the condo’s four toilets. The palmetto bug (the Chamber of Commerce name for the huge cockroach) was not primarily a house dweller, but lived in the lush vegetation that the tropics provided and made an occasionally memorable domestic foray. Too big to squash, the bug was now ensconced in a small Tupperware container. Keitel carried it out to the pond on the golf course bordering their house. He could see the breakfast swirls of the pond’s fish. Opening the top of the container, he flipped the creature into the water. Its six legs started kicking up ripples in every direction.
The vibrations were like a dinner bell. A huge bass blasted into the bug, coming halfway out of the water. Apparently, it didn’t find palmetto bugs disgusting. Damn, that was a big fish! With all the chemicals draining into the water, Keitel thought, the pond’s bass could hit 70 home runs in the majors.
***
Christian Keitel and Jesús Garza had been together for five years. They met in one of Miami’s hotter clubs, which, while not catering exclusively to gays, was a reliable place to find lovers of any sex. The German had recently arrived in the country, and was looking for work. He had done some modeling but it was soon apparent that his talents lay elsewhere. Garza gave him surveillance jobs and an occasional debt collection. The ex-commando proved adept at both. Any doubts about his potential were put to rest one night after he was accosted by two men who tried to relieve him of his night’s receipts.
“They used to work for the pig that owed the money,” Keitel told Garza the next morning, sporting a bruise above his right eye.
“Used to work?”
“Here’s the money.”
“This is more than he owed,” Garza said.
“I cleaned out their wallets after I killed them. The idiots pulled knives. I’ll take care of the pig tonight. It will be on me.”
Garza, the more reflective of the two, occasional wondered at the odds of two homicidal gay men of such differing backgrounds winding up together. Actually, he had to admit, it probably wasn’t all that remarkable given the incredibly varied and bizarre nightlife available in Miami. Some of their hangouts reminded him of the cantina in Star Wars.
Both were well liked within the Ballantrae organization by the majority of their fellow employees – who knew them only as “Financial Consultants” – for their good humor and consideration. They remembered birthdays, were the life of office parties and avoided the politics and backstabbing prevalent in most financial services firms. (Frontstabbing was another matter.) They shared a large corner office on the 40th floor overlooking Biscayne Bay. They also shared a beautiful secretary whose main function was to book their trips. They were often out of town. She wondered how brokers could spend so much time out of the office. But that was not unusual in this company. The entire floor was seemingly staffed by receptionists and secretaries. The plush executive offices were usually vacant. Garza and Keitel did no mailings, gave no seminars and rarely made a phone call. But business seemed to be thriving. It was the same for many of the other brokers. At least her “boys” kept her busy with their travel and active social life. She was always ordering tickets to some play or gallery opening for them, or catering one of their parties. The other secretaries and assistants rarely had anything to do. Over lunch or in the coffee room some of the girls complained about being bored. Once in a while somebody wondered where all the money was coming from. But since some of that money was coming their way – the pay was excellent and everyone got a nice bonus at year’s end – the talk never went past the donut stage.
It was well for them that it didn’t. The whole operation was a sham and hemorrhaging money. The brokers – the men and women who occasionally showed up – were all legally registered with Series 7 and 63 certificates and were licensed to buy and sell securities. But they rarely did that. True, there were a couple of old-timers hired as window dressing. Any clients they brought in, any assets they gathered, any trades they generated, were gravy.
For the main business of the financial services section was laundering money. So much that the brokerage operations could afford to “lose” $30 million a year. Jesús Garza and Christian Keitel had their Series 7, but also a few Glock 9’s. They would argue that of all the executives on their floor, they were the only ones with real jobs. The company employed many tough characters in its Security Division, but Garza and Keitel were the problem solvers. They took pride in their work and made it as entertaining as possible, believing traditional assassinations too dangerous. A double tap to the back of the head with a silenced .22 aroused suspicions even in the dimmest cops. But bizarre, hard-to-explain deaths were usually written off as bad luck. Garza, with his experience in Castro’s service, was by far the more innovative. That rankled Keitel, whose only real coup involved the impregnation of one target’s toilet paper with tetrodotoxin, an instantly fatal nerve poison. And even that he’d borrowed from the Mossad, something he neglected to tell his partner.
***
Keitel was lying naked on his stomach on a lounger, his head hanging over the end, where he had placed a Kindle on a wooden stand. He was half way through The Old Man and the Sea. Garza had started him on Hemingway; like many Cubans he revered the American author.
Keitel’s body was muscled and golden, broad shoulders tapering to an absurdly thin waist. His buttocks were taut; he was an accomplished runner, both at sprints and distance. At the base of his spine, where there was a small knob, a tuft of golden down waved gently in the breeze provided by an overhead fan in the covered part of the lanai a few feet away. Keitel knew that the prominence of his tailbone was caused by too many rough parachute landings (and idiotic boat rides). It was, literally, a pain in the ass, but the hard little knot couldn’t be surgically repaired without risk. Besides, he knew that many of his lovers found the little “tail” attractive.
Keitel barely remembered his parents, who died when he was very young. He and his older sister were taken in by an aunt and uncle who were as kindly as they were dull. The couple had no children of their own, and apparently few friends, the result, Christian suspected, of the Keitel family’s rather checkered past, which included a distant relative who had been Hitler’s chief of staff. That was a Keitel who didn’t run fast enough; his wartime service earned him a trip to the gallows. The aunt and uncle were farmers, so both Christian and his sister, Hannah, grew up strong. There was plenty of good solid food, but farm work melted off the calories. He rarely saw Hannah anymore, but recent photos indicated that she should not have given up milking cows. Still, she was a pleasant enough woman. Keitel regularly sent her large amounts of money with the understanding that half would go into German and French real estate, and the rest to educating her ever-growing brood of children.
A track star in school, Keitel immediately distinguished himself as a non-commissioned officer and eventually wound up in Germany’s elite KSK, or "Special Power Commando" battalion, the equivalent of the British SAS. He participated in several secret combat operations, often with allied units.
Keitel stopped reading. He watched a small lizard feasting on ants. It was fascinating. The lizard, a dark green anole, was perched on the bottom rung of the umbrella table next to Keitel’s chaise. The ants were trying to navigate a no-man’s-land between the pool and the small flower garden bordering the lanai. The ants often stopped in patches of dappled shade caused by the leaves of nearby plants. Some even paused near drops of water that had sprayed from Keitel’s body after his frequent cooling-down swims. Were they drinking? Or just made momentarily cautious by the change in their almost microscopic environment? The tiny reptile stayed motionless, but for its bobbing head, until an ant wandered into the killing ground. Keitel estimated that the distance between the lizard’s ambush site and the ant trail was three feet. Once the anole targeted an ant it was over in seconds. A few lucky ants veered away under Keitel’s chaise before the lizard pounced. Their good fortune annoyed Keitel and he finished them with a finger. The only other part of his body that moved was his head, moving up and down in rhythm with that of the lizard.
***
Garza dropped his bag on the kitchen counter and grabbed a Dos Equis from the refrigerator. Kicking off his shoes he padded silently out to the pool.
“Christian, I believe you have finally gone around the bend.”
“Be quiet. Don’t frighten him. It’s almost in his kill zone.”
Garza ignored him and sat down in a chair next to the table. That was too much for the anole, which shot into the garden.
“Thank you very much.”
�
�Just what are you doing?” Garza was exasperated.
Keitel told him.
“I know this is Naples, Christian, but aren’t you a bit young for a retirement home?”
“Show some respect. We are amateurs compared to that little assassin. Look at how far he had to traverse. It would be like one of us running a city block for a bite and back again in ten seconds.”
“Remarkable. But I prefer our diet, no? Which reminds me, I am hungry. Get dressed. Let’s go out for dinner. I will tell you how it went in Seattle.”
“Let’s try that seafood place on Third Street,” Keitel said, springing up.
“Good God, no! It will be some time before I can look a fish in the eye again. I want French food. You can satiate your blood lust by stalking a snail. By the way, what are you doing home? I thought you had jury duty again.”
Two Jakes Page 8
